Welcome to Silent Hill
by Atolm2000
Summary: Pre-SH 3, Vincent fic; on how he got to where he is when he shows up in the third game, and how he got the way he is. Chapter 4 up - A little meeting with Alessa...
1. Dead End

Here's hoping the formatting stays nice on this one....fingers crossed

Me no own Konami, Silent Hill, Vincent, Alessa, etc.; I'm not particularly inclined to claim the nameless dog-beasties right now, though they're not game-beasties they're a variation on a theme.

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Vincent locked the doors of the historical society at about 4 am, humming smugly with an armload of books and folders. A few hours and he'd be eating pancakes at the rest stop down the road, then come tomorrow he'd be HOME and away from this town of secrets and religious psychopaths. He almost didn't notice, on his way out, the dark-haired girl in the blue dress leaning by the lamppost out front.

"Town's not gonna let you leave now, y'know."

He stopped, raised an eyebrow at her, and started putting the books in the back seat of the old beat-up grey sedan. The girl had been showing up for a few months now - probably a really bored local kid who'd heard a few two many stories, or one in on a prank or scare-attempt; if nothing else, she was probably a figment of his imagination and another sign it was well past time to get out of town. He ignored her, finished putting the evidence in his car, then got in, and drove off.

She showed up again, sitting on the "Welcome to Silent Hill" sign in the fog that'd rolled in as he was driving out; he didn't even slow down. The fog thickened in over the car....then his headlights caught a sign by the road.

"Welcome to Silent Hill", with the same dark-haired girl in an old-fashioned blue dress sitting on it watching him dully. He slowed to a stop, staring at it, then put the car in gear and slowly turned it around, and took off again, heading out at the speed limit, fog be damned.

"Welcome to Silent Hill". Slowing to a stop again, he glared at the town, at the sign, at the road ahead in general, adjusting his glasses in indignation. There was a reasonable explanation for this, there had to be. He turned the car around again, and floored it; the car was old, but he'd cared for the insides fairly well, and he hit sixty in a matter of moments.

"Welcome to Silent Hill". Not only was the damn sign in front of him again, but it'd taken exactly as long to reach it at 60 as it'd taken at 30. He slowed down, almost stopped, then a wild idea entered his head - sped back past it, did a fast bootlegger's turn on the other side.

"Welcome to Silent Hill". Not even slowing down, he passed it, hitting another bootlegger and racing on. This was probably Hell on his car.

"Welcome to Silent Hill". He slowed to a stop again across from the sign, muttering under his breath. "There's got to be a way out of this fucking Hellhole...The road is straight, I should just be able to drive right out Damnit...this is a trick, it has to be, Claudia's trying to scare me, that has to be it, crazy bitch..." If going straight didn't work - he put the car in reverse, driving backward as fast as he could and still keep the car going straight.

"Welcome to Silent Hill" in the rear-view mirror, approaching. His foot almost fell off the gas limp as the car slowed, then he stopped it across from the sign again. Why did God pick now to acquire a warped sense of humor? He came from a good Catholic family, he'd done his confessions for years; what this place needed was a good exorcism, and maybe a fire-truck of holy water. He wasn't going to be beaten by this insane place now.

He got out of the car, pulling his duffel bag out of the trunk; it was more important that he get the documents out than anything, and once he was out of town he could call for help, so he dumped his clothes and personal effects into the trunk, locked it to retrieve later, and put the books and papers recording the drug ring, the sacrifices, everything the cult had been up to into the bag, tossing it over his shoulder, and heading off into the woods, where there was a walking trail that led out of town. He barely favored the girl sitting on the sign with a suspicious glance. She was either a figment or part of some plot more sinister than a simple prank; bored local girl or Halloween joke had dropped off the list.

"Toldja it wouldn't let you leave." He kept walking. "That's not a good idea."

"Shut the Hell up.", he tossed back over his shoulder, drily, and kept walking, muttering. "Bloody figment of my bloody imagination...." The girl jumped down off the sign and followed behind him about ten feet. "I wouldn't suppose you know how to get out of here?" Sarcastic, biting, and not even looking back as he asked.

"Get in your car, and drive back into town.", she stated succinctly, as if it were obvious.

".....'Town' is not 'Out of here'."

"It's not going to let you out, not until you've done whatever you came to do."

"I can't finish what I came here to do unless I can get out of town and deliver these.", he snapped, patience fraying. He was going to be late for the meeting, Damnit.

"In that case, you're pretty fucked."

He stopped, turned, and adjusted his glasses looking down at the girl. "Strong language for someone your age, isn't it? Do your parents know you talk like that?" Figment or threat, he wasn't going to let her get to him -

She hissed through her teeth, glaring at him with more malevolence than should've been possible on a fourteen year old. "If you don't know who I am, then you need to do more research." He raised an eyebrow; so she was playing at being Alessa. He didn't believe in ghosts.

He turned and kept walking on, reaching the path and taking it.

There was a strange, wet growl in the trees, that he stopped at; he wanted to believe it was a dog, yes, a dog, or maybe a cougar down from the mountains, or...it didn't sound like any of the above. Something limped out of the trees ahead of him, vaguely a dog, thin transclucent skin stretched over sickly muscles, one eye glowing balefire green, the other bleeding as if it'd been pierced out. The world was out to get him. He wasn't going to believe in monsters, it was probably some very, VERY sick stray, snarling and probably insane, possibly rabid. His gun was in the duffel bag. He moved to unshoulder the bag enough to reach the gun, slowly enough to hopefully not startle it -

It lunged, snapping and giving off strangled barks; he turned and ran, shifting it back where he could carry it without losing it. He went off the path, using the underbrush to try and slow it down, dodging as it narrowly missed his calves, then his arm, as he reached his car, still patiently sitting next to the sign; slamming the driver's side door, he dropped the duffel bag in the passenger side as the dog-thing ran began beating itself against the window, leaving layers of damp, thin skin and streaks on the glass. Starting the car, he floored it, the tires screaming as they spun, then caught the ground.

"Welcome to Silent Hill". The dog thing was waiting in the middle of the road; he swerved around it as it lunged, then took off chasing the car, barely clipping it with his front bumper as he pulled another bootlegger's turn. There was a yelp, then in his rear-view he could see the balefire green eye pick itself up in the fog before it vanished...

"Welcome to Silent Hill". Its left foreleg was a shattered, bloody mess, its lower jaw scraped to bone on the left side, but it still stood waiting in his path. This time he swerved to catch it sidelong with the bumper, the car jolting as it went under the wheels with a wet crunch. Another bootlegger's turn and he went over it again, heading out of town, the corpse disappearing into the fog, the girl leaning against the sign watching dispassionately.

"Welcome to Silent Hill". The dead dog-thing was a smear spread across the pavement, entrails and parts scattered, jagged bits of bone sticking up in places that he had to steer to drive around so they wouldn't pierce his tires; the red streak went for a good twenty feet. The girl was still standing by the sign. Speed past, bootleg, out.

"Welcome to Silent Hill". The body was gone. The girl was still there, watching the road. Speed past, bootleg, out.

"Welcome to Silent Hill". There was a balefire gleam on the right side of the road, loping out of the woods, another on the left ahead past the sign; the girl stood, unbothered by it all. Speed past, bootleg, they hit the road screeching mad howls, he hit one, the other gave chase.

"Welcome to Silent Hill". The demon-dog was waiting by the sign for him come back, its compatriot was in a shattered pile twitching to stand just off the road. He caught it with the other side, it rolled over the car and fell by the roadside. Bootlegger's turn, floor it out.

"Welcome to Silent Hill". The first one he'd hit had drug its shattered body into the road, one hind leg hanging off by a thread of flesh dragging behind it. The other one was up on all fours, its head dangling by the windpipe. A third one had appeared, sitting obediently next to the girl, who was absent-mindedly scratching behind its ears as she watched. Straight over the almost-headless one, bootlegger's, pull out his pistol with one hand, roll down the window, floor it.

"Welcome to Silent Hill". Aiming out the window, he fired once and the somewhat-three-legged one's head exploded; a second shot to its chest, and it fell over, twitching. Bootlegger's, slow down next to the sign, aiming at the girl.

"What the Hell do you want?!"

She gave a cracked chuckle. "What do I want? I don't know, a life would be nice."

"Let me the fuck out of here!"

"Or you'll what, shoot me?" She chuckled again at the threat. "Sorry, but I can't let you go; it's the Town that decided to keep you. Did you really think you could just drive out of here with its secrets?"

"Are you telling me that everything that crazy witch has been ranting about is true?!" He noticed the muzzle of the gun wobbling - his hand was shaking.

"Crazy - Oh, Claudia? I wouldn't say that ev-ery-thing she's ranted about is true....but you're not in the world you think you know anymore." She patted the dog-demon's head, and just let her hand rest across its skull. "I can't speak for the Town, but maybe if you're a good boy and go back into town, if it's what It wants, it'll let you spend your time on the waking side. Maybe. Or maybe it'll just leave you in my world..."

For a moment, the fog pulled back; the sign rusted, part of it falling off, the trees withered to black that twitched and jigged unnaturally as if the branches were clawing at the sky, grass withered away to dingy blood-stained gravel, the highway crumbled and cracked with jagged metal, glass, and bits of dead things melted into the pavement, and in his rear-view mirror, he could see it drop off into a river of lava behind him, blocking the way out of town. Then the fog returned, the sign was itself if a bit dingy, the forest was dark and shadowed but a forest, and the highway stretched into the fog that looped back on itself.

He put the pistol down on the seat next to him. "How do I beat this?"

"What?" She blinked and stared at him strangely.

"So all the occult ramblings are true. So there's demons and some nightmare world here. How do I beat this so that I can leave?"

She continued staring at him strangely; both hands on the steering wheel now, he stared ahead at the town, gone from a near-panic to a shaken, cold resolve. "Do some research. Kill God."

"Is that all, now...." He gave a cynic laugh, put the car in gear, and drove forward. Into town.

"Welcome to Silent Hill".

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Oh, as for Vincent's little mission - He wasn't exactly given much background or explanation in the game besides that he worked as the cult's financier. ; I got the feeling he'd been working at odds to the cult all along, and have him here as undercover FBI, with the finance job as a cover identity gone very wrong. If there's some canon info I don't know about that contradicts this...oh well. :P


	2. Magdalene

Meheheheheh…yep, decided to continue.

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When he pulled up to the front door of the historical society, the fog had cleared, leaving the town normal. Claudia was standing by the door, plainly waiting as much as she tried to play it off. He chose to ignore her, retrieving the duffel bag of books and papers, and walking nonchalantly up the walk, heedless of the dents and bloodstains on his car.

She watched him come up the walk, a smug smile spreading. "Welcome home, Vincent." It wasn't a friendly greeting, it was gloating.

He paused in the doorway, then chose not to respond, heading for the library room instead, to replace the books before he got some rest.

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The next morning, sitting in the driver's seat of his car, he flipped open a small pocket notepad, revising his notes on what was and wasn't important or relevant information. Several of the urban legends and rumors he'd been hearing had the "irlvnt" tags scratched out, replaced by scribbled ballpoint stars. Four of the new starred entries related to a nurse he'd lent a sympathetic ear to at the café down the street more than once, and her tales of one particularly problematic patient.

He parked outside the hospital; it was a bright, clear, warm day, with just enough breeze to keep the air moving. He never failed to be amazed at how much pleasant weather the town had; to someone just passing through, an average photo of main street would be worth putting on a postcard to send home. It was quite insidious, knowing what he knew of the town's politics.

He carried nothing more than his tape recorder and notebook as he walked into the ward for long-term and terminally ill patients, entering through a side door. Avoiding security was mostly a matter of watching for their attention to be on something else and simply walking past as if he belonged there, a background element; as long as he didn't show any reaction, he was fine.

He wandered around the wing like that until he saw a brunette nurse checking over a clipboard tiredly; walking up behind her, he tapped her on the shoulder. "Nancy?"

She jumped, then gave him a bleary, tired, half-lidded regard, as if trying to place his presence as something real. "Vincent? What're you doing here?"

"I'm on historical society business. You'd been talking about having a patient whose family has been in this area for generations?" He gave a long enough pause for her to nod. "I was wondering if I'd be able to speak to her."

"You want to talk to Mary?" she squinted at him. "I don't think you'll get much out of it, she's not really stable."

He gave a congenial smile. "Well, I'll just have to try my luck, then, if it wouldn't trouble you any."

She checked her watch and thought it over. "Just for a few minutes, alright? Try not to upset her." She led him down the hallway, around a corner, to one of the narrow white window-set doors; opened it just enough to stick her head in.

"Mary? There's someone from the Historical Society here to see you. Should I let him in?"

He heard a weak, "Go ahead, not like I have anything better to do.", from inside the room; Nancy pulled the door open and waved him in.

The lady in the bed was thin to frailty, long mousy brown hair spreading limp around her face. Her face was sickly, fishbelly white, blotched, with her eyes sunken and dark. Her hands were folded over her stomach, and if not for the faint movement of breathing and the flicker of her eyes tracking him, he'd think he was looking at a badly embalmed corpse someone had forgotten to put in a casket. An IV line ran into her wrist from its stand, tubes in her nose running to a machine awkwardly wedged in between the bed and the wall next to the window, which was open, the breeze stirring the edges of the curtains. There was an alarm clock on the nightstand, a stack of yellowed paperbacks, the remote for the small TV that was silent in its stand near the ceiling, a small forest of propped-up cards all in the same handwriting crowding the vase.

His eyes flickered to the charts hanging on the nightstand, and the name in block typewriter print at the top.

"Mary Shepherd-Sunderland?"

"Yes?", she rasped.

He set down his notebook and tape recorder teetering on a bare edge of the nightstand, offering his hand. "My name is Vincent Lingham. I work at the Historical Society, and was wondering if I could talk to you about your family history."

She closed her eyes. "Don't pity me."

"Come again?" He lowered his hand.

"When you walked in, it was written all over your face, how you carried yourself. It's one of the worst parts of being here; everyone pities you, until it's like you're more some caged dog with mange than a human being." Her voice must've been pretty once, now ground and beaten by the illness.

"I'm sorry."

"You want to know about my family? They're a bunch of vultures, all praying I die before the hospital bills take too much out of my share of the estate. Two years and not so much as a card. All moved south so they'd have an excuse to avoid taking responsibility for me. It's like I eloped in reverse." She spoke as if she'd bitterly accepted it long ago, and it'd become rote fact.

"I'm sorry for that too."

One eye cracked open, gaze falling back on him. "Why are you apologizing for that?"

"Well, the people that owe you the apology aren't apparently, so I may as well."

Her brow furrowed, studying him. "Aren't you going to tell me you're sure it's not that bad, you're sure they care about me?"

"I'm afraid that I haven't been that much of an optimist about human nature for a long time." He tapped the nearest card with his pen, retrieving and flipping open his notebook. "And there'd be more than one signature on these if your family were paying more attention."

She chuckled drily, sounding like a faulty coffee grinder, and closed her eye again, almost as if asleep. "Well, then, Mister Lingham, what did you want to ask me about?" It was an alias anyway.

"Please, just call me Vincent."

"Vincent then."

"How much do you know about the fire about twenty years ago?"

"The fire, hmmm? Well, I've heard quite a bit about it, but not from my family…they weren't here for it." The eyelid slid open again, and he was suddenly aware that he was being studied. "Car trouble recently?"

The pen point hit the side of the notebook, sliding a long, thin trial of ink from a stabbed dot. "What do you mean, car trouble?"

"Aaah…so you're…. that Vincent." Another rusted, crackling chuckle.

He set the pen and pad down in his lap, took off his glasses, and started cleaning them quietly. "Come again? I'm afraid I don't have a clue what you're getting at."

"Your car must not be in that great a shape after your little adventure. She told me aallll about it."

He froze, cloth still folded over his glasses. "She?"

"My little angel…or devil." She turned her head, just enough to fix both eyes on him. "They're the same thing in the end, aren't they?" He put the cloth away and put his glasses on, taking a minute to get them setting right on the bridge of his nose. "She's one of the ones that comes in here to talk…I tell them stories…the doctors told me they're not here, but that's just because they can't see them."

"How do you know I'm not going to tell you the same thing?"

"Because you've talked to her. She said you were an interesting one."

He was beginning to feel vaguely unsettled. She was on multiple drugs for the illness, likely mildly delirious from the illness, and possible crazy on top of it; but she knew about the other night…

The door opened, but Nancy only barely got her head in the door before Mary let out a blood-curdling scream and threw the empty vase; it shattered on the door as Nancy flinched out of the way, spraying water and bits of broken ceramic everywhere, while Mary shrieked about "Monsters! All of you monsters! Don't come anywhere near me, anywhere at all!!" He stood up, stepping back, trying to figure out what he'd done or said that might've triggered the outburst; when he moved, she seemed to remember his presence. "You! You're from the Historical Society, you're working with them, aren't you?!" Before he could give any kind of stunned response, she'd thrown his tape recorder at him, hitting him hard in the chest; he put a hand up to keep it from falling and hurried out, shutting the door behind him while she continued screaming and thrashing.

He fell back against the wall, thrown off. Nancy had taken up one of the empty chairs across the hall and was just watching the door, glancing at her watch occasionally.

"Does this happen often?"

"Fraid so."

"You have my apologies if it was anything I said…"

She waved a hand, dismissing it. "It's impossible to tell what'll trigger her fits; the most we can do is stay out of the way. We've tried settling her down, even drugging her, but it only seems to make it worse when she comes out of it."

"Ah…is this a bad time?" It'd somewhat registered that someone else was there, but now Vincent realized that the nervous-looking man had stopped by them, addressing Nancy. He had dusty blonde hair combed back short, a threadbare green jacket, plain jeans and street clothes, and was holding a bundle of white lilies, shifting his weight from foot to foot in something between fear and embarrassment.

"Well, she did throw the vase at me, but it should die down enough for her to recognize you in…oh…twenty minutes, give or take, depending on what the doctors decide to do - they've probably already overheard this."

"Oh…." He looked down at the flowers. "I guess I should get another vase while I'm waiting then…"

"You might want to rethink the lilies, too…she's been in a morbid mood again."

"Right…I'll be back in a little bit." He sighed dejectedly, dusting the floor with his shoes as he walked back out, slumped.

"I suppose…that would be the one leaving the cards?" Vincent nodded toward the retreating figure.

Nancy nodded. "That's her husband, James…real sweetheart, one of the most long-suffering people on the planet. He gets the worst of it sometimes, and never seems to let it bother him; I don't think he's got a malicious bone in his body."

"I'll be going then, I suppose…thank you for the time, and I hope I didn't cause any trouble."

"Don't worry about it…just remember to sign out on your way out." She sighed, already settled into waiting, watching the door.

He got halfway through the hallway when something dark crept into the edges of his vision; he stopped and blinked, thinking to get it out. Instead, when he opened his eyes, the entire hallway had changed; the lights guttered dimly, dried blood and other nameless stains covered the wall, the floor tiles rotted and were broken up, and the nurse that'd been checking a chart down the hall had turned toward him, head hanging down in front of her brokenly, skin pale, clammy, diseased, the color of a dead fish, boils running down the twisted neck, uniform stained to a dingy rust-tainted grey from white, one hand clutching a needle long enough to kill with. He blinked again, and the hallway was back to normal, brightly lit, and the nurse was walking away.

Was that the world Mary saw when she had her fits? Was she seeing the same place as the dark vision he'd had on the road…or was he just going as crazy as the woman still screaming behind him?

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I figure Vincent's last name is an alias anyway, and …well, it's the first thing that occurred to me that seemed to stick, after a long period of staring at my PDA screen blankly.

Gotta love Alchemilla hospital….


	3. Walk On Vanity Ruins

Odd note, this is a funny kind of fidget…I work on it in breaks between classes and while I'm sorting thoughts on other work, so it's a sanity-saver. (…as wrong as it is to use Silent Hill for a sanity SAVER.) I do plan on including most of the other SH characters here and there, either in actual presence or in reference - since saaay, Harry's probably not going to go anywhere near Silent Hill, and Vincent isn't going to be allowed out. As for Henry and the 4 cast showing up - that'll largely depend on how the timeline tweaks out on the four games; I've already set 2 around when this fic starts, and was thinking that with the lack of reference to a central church in 4, it'd make the most sense to set it somewhere after events of 3… -cough- with my POV character, that might be a problem, exc. for the ones that were in Silent Hill before 4 begins.

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Every time he walked to the car for two days, the dents and rusty blood marks bothered him. Had the twisted fog-realm, the dog-things, all been a dream? If he were just hallucinating, then they wouldn't have left damage to the car; but if he was hallucinating, maybe his mind was just filling in the damage to the car.

At least that gave him a simple test; it was probably about time to get the oil changed and the engine checked anyway.

He followed a couple recommendations to a shop and junkyard on the north edge of town; it was quiet when he arrived, except for the rustlings of several large vultures perched on various weed-grown wrecks around the building. Two of them shared a vigil from the winch of a rust-spotted white tow truck parked in front of one of the garage bays; he parked beside it.

He almost wondered if anyone was there as he got out of the car, when the murky, dirty glass door swung open with a jangle of cow bells and mismatched chimes; an older man of leather and grime walked out, rubbing together hands hidden in thick work gloves, jeans alternately faded and blotched pocked with acid holes, thick wool shirt faded to a sort of dingy lack of color. He waved to Vincent, then looked to the vultures who'd started rustling and squalling; disappearing into the shop briefly, he emerged again with a metal bucket, throwing bits of old meat-scrap to each of them as he walked.

"You feed the vultures?", he asked, forgetting courtesies at the strange spectacle.

"They showed up'ere a few years ago; I tried to chas'em off, then it occurred t'me that I'm makin' my living more off salvage as anything, an'we're not so far apart, me'n'them."

Vincent nodded slowly, watching the two on the tow truck pull apart a piece of gristly meat between them. The mechanic walked his car, studying the dents and damage speculatively.

"What'd y'hit? Almost looks like some'in was tryin' to get in your way." He kicked one of the bloodstains on the bumper. It was real.

"Aah, couple strays; think they were rabid or something."

The mechanic nodded and knelt down to study the worst of the dents on the left side, over the wheel well; leaning under the car, he hrmed and clicked at whatever he was seeing.

"Y'ever feel like the world's goin' nuts, an'yer the only sane thing left?"

Vincent felt an inner wince that didn't show. "Sometimes, quite."

One glove raised out of the wheel well, a rotting piece of thin, translucent skin dripping off it. "Wouldn'ta wanted to see that roadkill.", the mechanic stated matter of factly, then started fighting to get something loose from the axle; Vincent slowly took a couple steps back, to sit on the seat of a motorcycle parked on the sidelines.

It was a blue and white police cycle, complete with the windshield on the front and identification numbers; it looked like it'd been refurbished and parts had been replaced.

"Christ, that musta been some hit; yer lucky you didn't wreck completely." He looked up, and the mechanic was standing up, dusting the sides of his jeans, holding something white and red and ragged; he walked partway around the car and held up a stretch of four vertebrae, bits of tendon, muscle, and more skin-slime still clinging to it. "This was wedged in onna the axle joints. Damn lucky somm'in didn't break." He tossed it back over one shoulder to another of the vultures, who greedily caught it out of midair.

"Are you sure you want them eating that?"

"Eh; is' their purpose in life, t'clean up what nobody else'll touch. 's what we scavengers do."

The vulture had set it down with one claw on it, ripping the shreds away from the bone. It must've been part of the neck of the one he'd almost taken the head off; the sun gleaming off the vulture's black feathers and pale pink head seemed to lend more realism to the scrap of carrion and the beast it'd come from. He looked away, back to the bike.

"How'd you come by this?" He patted the middle of the handlebars.

"That? Salvage, like a lot of the other stuff here." He gestured at the wrecks and partial wrecks littering the grounds. "Spent months rebuilding the bloody thing, an'no matter what I do, it won't work, but then, considerin' where I pulled it out of, I shouldn' be surprised."

"Was it sunken in a lake or something?"

"Nah; 'twas one of the routine ol' abandoned wrecks that turns up. Y'know that stretch of road out by th'Welcome to town sign?" The sun seemed to shine a little colder as Vincent nodded. "Every year, I get called out three er four times t'fetch wrecks from the ditch out there; never a soul t'claim'em. It's almost creepy; I cn'call and call an' track registration, but's like the people that owned'em 'ave vanished int'thin air, an' nobody seems t'have a clue what happened or care that they're gone." Two more degrees dropped from Vincent's blood; had he almost been another of those nameless wrecks? "Y'think that's some'n, you should see what came off the other side of the road, same damn night." The old junker waved at him to follow, and led him around the building, to point at an old seventies black four-door. The front end was crumpled inward as if it'd hit a narrow, unyielding pole dead center, folding the entire front of the car almost up to the windshield; next to it was an engine block that'd been cut clean through, crumpling around whatever'd been hit. "Found this one on the other side of the road; looked fer all the world like the poor bastard'd swerved t'miss somethin' and gone off the road. Y'know what 'e hit to trash the car like that?" Vincent shook his head slowly. "The sign. Had to pry it offa where it'd folded right around that damn welcome sign. The support pole shoulda snapped clean off, but when we got the car offa it, there wasn't a scratch on it t'show it'd been hit almost. Night I pulled these two in...I was out there 'till two am gettin' this one offa the sign, an' when I finally got it on the tow truck, I get in the cab, an' go to start it, an' this fog rolls in, thicker'n pea soup. Lights aren't even cuttin' through it, an' I'm thinkin, I can't even see the damn road under me, maybe I should just sleep in the cab...so I look down t'turn on the radio an' see what's up, an' look back up, an'its like I parked in Hell itself. The trees were clawin' at the sky like they wanted t'let somethin out, but never when I looked at'em straight, everythin' was rust and rot and death, an'there were things movin' in the woods, things that weren't ever s'pposed to exist; radio flipped out, screamin' unholy racket, but there were patterns t'it, like some'n unnatural were tryin' t'chant through it. Then just as sudden, everythin' was back t'normal, the fog was 'nuff to drive through, calm an'quiet a night as'y'please. Never drove back faster'n my life."

Forget feeling like the only sane one; the world had gone mad, and was dragging Vincent in with it, the wreck attesting mutely to the fate of the town's victims.

Welcome to Silent Hill.


	4. Room of Angel

Mwahahahahah I liiiiive…Well, mid-terms have hit, so everything's slowing to a crawl, but I'm catching back up, and have ended up with a decent plan of where this will be headed, and who is and isn't showing up…which I'm going to keep mum on for now - I'm sure some of it'll be a sur-prise. -plotplot- Of course, some things are going to take a bit to come in and out of the picture…

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It was almost 2 am; Vincent had holed up in the Historical Society library, to take a second look at many of the documents and see what he could piece together in light of some of the…new realizations, and the evidence he'd turned up in the locked records only members were allowed near. Of course, even with those, his knowledge was still cramped; he was allowed in one of the rooms for his bookkeeping work, but not the other. Things came back to the big fire, to the actions of Claudia's predecessor and mentor, and to the links between what was visible of the history of the town, and the hidden story related to the drug trade and the cult.

The more he read, the more there was a growing unease. The fire department hadn't responded for several hours; the mayor had come up with five contradictory excuses, and any commentary or record of the real reasons was lost. The house where it'd started was Dahlia's, and the infamous little ghost had been trapped inside - reported dead, but he'd found records in Kaufmann's old papers that she hadn't been. How much of Dahlia's sway over the town did Claudia maintain? "Burned half the town and her own daughter, police, fire department, mayor all on a leash…Vincent, you've gotten in over your head this time."

He took off his glasses, and went to rub his eyes; the book open in his lap shifted, and an old photo fell out. Replacing his glasses, he picked it up.

It was a familiar dark-haired girl in a powder blue dress, arms crossed, fixing the camera with a forbidding gaze; marked on the bottom was a date seven years after the fire. Something moved on the edge of his vision, and he looked up; a familiar dark-haired girl in a powder blue dress, arms crossed, with a forbidding expression.

At first he was just confused, chalking the afterimage up to sleep deprivation - he'd just stopped looking at the picture. He hadn't really slept much in the last two days. Then it dawned on him that she wasn't just static like the picture, she was actually there, and that it was the same girl that he'd been seeing since he arrived, and that she matched the photograph down to the slightest detail -

Except for the bandaged, burned, vaguely canine mass of flesh sitting sprawled obediently at her feet, all recognizable features destroyed by its apparent injuries.

"You're…the girl from before…"

"Alessa Gillespie." She sounded half like she was correcting, half like she was repeating.

"Aless…." The photo was thirteen, almost fourteen years old; she didn't look any older than fourteen, nor did she show any of the signs of - of the injuries described in the fragmented parts of Kaufmann's records he'd found. He was glancing between the photo, her, and the beast resting at her feet. "You're a ghost."

"No, ghosts are dead." She sounded like she was explaining something to a small child.

"You're not dead?" He was too tired, too confused, too unused to thinking of the supernatural as more than mumbo-jumbo spouted by two-bit manipulative cons that wanted to feel important.

Her response was a bitter laugh. "No…only dreaming."

"And that?" He tipped his head to nod at the creature.

"He's a dream. My puppy - from before the fire." The thing suddenly began twitching and twisting, warping, the wounds pulling together, bandages dissolving to ash that vanished in dust, skin growing over muscle and sinew, until there was a full grown Doberman-rottweiler mix curled at her feet panting.

He could feel the last bits of his guarded skepticism falling away at the spectacle. Bits of evidence had tacked onto bits of evidence, and now it was staring him right in the face, and it seemed more dangerous to assume that it was just sleep deprivation than to treat it as something real.

"If you're not dead, then how are you here, just like you…were, or would've been, in 1980?"

"This isn't my body."

There had to be an explanation, and she was a major part of all this - there were too many pieces to track down, too many details he'd need to know to understand what he'd walked into. "Then where is your body?"

She tensed, a darker glare covering her features, as if she were looking through his skin at something underneath. "You want to know where I've been all these years?" The dog twisted and warped, skin peeling away, flesh rotting and scorching, bandages reforming, the head splitting sideways in a yawn lined with bits of jagged glass and bone. He was being studied, threatened, tested on some level he was only barely aware of.

Then the dark glare returned to the more usual only-slightly-cracked hunted expression. "If you want to find me, go to the Alchemilla hospital; get into the basement. There'll be a nurse there named Lisa Silverman; don't ask for her at the desk, just go straight to the basement and she'll be waiting. She'll take you to me."

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The next day around noon, he returned to Alchemilla hospital, taking his usual side route in; it was too easy to get in there without getting caught. While maneuvering around to one of the doors with access to the basement, he spotted Nancy, and a brief whim took him; he veered off, waving her over.

"Vincent? Didn't expect to see you here again so quickly - is there someone here you know, or…well…you don't plan on trying to talk to Mary again, do you?"

"No, I think I've disturbed the poor lady enough; I have something else I'm…curious about." He put on his best charming smile, hoping to disarm her tired confusion.

"And what would that be?"

"You wouldn't happen to know anything about a nurse named Lisa Silverman, would you?"

Her expression quickly took a few turns towards dark, worn out, and very, very irritated. "Is this historical society business, or did some kid put you up to this?"

"Did I say something wrong?" Cue the wounded look.

"Lisa Silverman's dead. She was on White Claudia and a few other hard drugs; she ran away and disappeared seven years ago, then turned up dead in South Ashfield of an overdose. The local kids think it's great fun to send people in here asking about her and stuff, because she's supposed to've been linked to some kind of ghost stories or something. I don't see why anyone would care about it unless they were into stupid superstitions."

"Ah. I see." Other drugs might've made this fuzzy, but White Claudia was purely the domain of the cult; a major source of their income. "Well, then, sorry to bother you; I'll be on my way." He half-bowed, backed up a step, then turned on one heel and walked away; coincidentally, the way out happened to be near the door to the basement.

He shut it behind him carefully, hoping nobody noticed that it wasn't locked; getting trapped down here would be the last thing he needed. The lights were naked bulbs hanging from the fixtures with cobwebbed pull-cords dangling from them; pipes ran bare and rusted across the ceiling with spiderwebs, spiders, and cockroaches decorating them, the masonry water-stained and mildewed in places until there wasn't any white left. The floor was blotched, pitted concrete, and standing at the bottom of the steps down was a slim, attractive blonde lady in an old-fashioned nurse's uniform with a fuzzy pink sweater draped over her shoulders, blue eyes watching him brightly and a little vacantly. "You must be Vincent! I'm Lisa."

She looked quite good for a dead woman.

"Ah…yes. I'm here to see Alessa?" He walked down the stairs, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose.

"Yep, she told me you'd be coming - right this way." She seemed both out of place and completely oblivious to the state of her surroundings. He'd heard ghosts were supposed to be creepy rotting things in the middle of otherwise normal surroundings, not the other way around.

She led down a couple side hallways in the web of basement without even a second look, stopping at a locked, worn door at the end of one hallway, a solid metal one without any windows; producing a key, she opened the lock, and held the door open for him.

He walked far enough in for Lisa to shut the door behind him, then stopped.

The room was in perhaps worse condition than the hallway outside; the light came on as he entered, untouched, sending cockroaches the size of his hand scurrying for cover, spiders disappearing into the pipes. A bank of wheezing machines was set up against one wall, hooked up to a bandaged, black and red husk in the bed; an IV drip hung on the other side. A rusted, dinged metal chair sat beside the bed. It was almost difficult to identify the wreck in the bed as human, much less female; a few tufts of ragged, matted black hair stuck out in places from stained bandages and broken skin, red-soaked pads were held in place by equally yellow-and-red stained bandages over the eyes, what wasn't covered with soaked through bandages was a cracked mix of charcoal and blood with boils and blisters breaking up the monotony here and there where something passed for skin; small patches of off-white showed in places where the collarbone and shoulders had burned down to bone. The mouth and nose were covered by a mask that led to more tubes, hooked into the machines.

It was one thing to read reports that edged around the subject of decades of suffering and torture, quite another to be suddenly faced with the wreckage of the abuse; it occurred to him that she'd been this way for almost twenty years, a pitiful, forgotten mess, scared to the point of being almost inhuman. He slowly crossed the room to stand beside the bed in mute shock; everything he'd seen must've been poltergeist projections, he'd be afraid to move the ragged thing in the bed, much less expect her to move on her own power. He held out a hand to touch her face, as if to confirm that she was real, then stopped just short; there was no skin left, even the slightest contact or movement would likely cause nothing but more pain.

Her apparition faded into the side of his vision, standing at the foot of the bed.

"So you've….been like this…ever since the fire?" His voice wavered.

"They won't let me heal - at all." She was grimly unconcerned, bitter, yet seemed resigned to her fate.

He couldn't find words, just shook his head slowly; to inflict this on a child, this long, and not only that but her own daughter, then to pass on the torment so that it wouldn't end…this was real evil; no demon or monster would ever match the kind of simple human cruelty reflected here. Something blurred the bottom of his glasses, and he realized there were actually tears.

"You don't need to worry about hurting me; I don't feel anything when I'm…out like this." She looked away from her body to the wall, arms crossed so that her hands were on her shoulders.

He nodded slightly, putting one hand over the burned one cautiously. It was real; the hand was warm, jagged and rough where it was burned, damp with the slight sheen of blood and never-quite-banished infection, fragile enough that he was afraid it would crumble if he closed his grip on it; as her arm shifted, a spider scuttled from a convenient hiding place between the bandages, darting off the bed to find a dark corner elsewhere. If anyone on Earth had earned the right to be bitter, it was the burned living scar in front of him, condemned by her own mother to this one room and a Hell of nightmares.

Something in him broke in sympathy, tears dissolving bits of the scabs on the cracked hand he was leaning over. Alessa shifted uncomfortably on the foot of the bed, then walked over to him.

"Look up - at me."

He took a deep breath, pulling back some composure, and looked up at the black-haired ghost, regarding him with a grim and unreadable gaze.

She reached out one hand and touched the center of his chest, and everything collapsed inward, the room blacking out into a spinning image of a crimson seal with three halos within, the blood humming in his veins taking on an alien chant, and a sudden awareness of the growing, infinite darkness that breathed beneath the town.

Then it broke back to reality, and the quiet room, the murmur of the machines and buzz of the lights, and Alessa standing over him.

"As long as you have that mark, the Nightmares won't bother you. Lisa will lead you back out to the exit."

And the apparition disappeared, leaving him alone with her near-corpse.


End file.
